The state of the Edmonton District in 1815.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Editor's Introduction

In 1815, James Bird, the Chief Factor at Edmonton House, prepared a report on the conditions existing in his extensive district. Based upon the Indians who traded there, he estimated it extended from the Athabasca River in the north, to the Missouri River in the south, to the Rocky Mountains to the west, and to about the Alberta-Saskatchewan border to the east.

This report is significant for a number of reasons. For example, it records the fact that gardening was an important part of the fur trade activities. The gardens were not small; Edmonton harvested 2,300 cabbages, two hundred bushels of potatoes, and large quantities of carrots, turnips, wheat and barley. Bird makes comments about difficulty with growing wheat because of early frosts--a problem not resolved until the invention of Marquis wheat more than a hundred years later. Not being an agriculturist, he thought that much of the thick loam in the region was underlain by pure sand. Clay was not mentioned. He also makes the prairies seem like the Sahara desert.

Some of Bird's comments about the Indians reveal as much about him as they do about the Indians themselves. He criticizes the Plains Indians because they are "covetous, independent and alive to their own interests." Obviously he thinks they should be grateful to the trading companies for their presence, and particularly to his own Hudson's Bay Company. But instead, the natives went to the fort that offered the best prices, either the Hudson's Bay Company or the rival North West Company. "In short," he says, "these Indians form very little attachment to particular Houses or to particular Traders." He also chastised them for not spending more time trapping and for pursuing their own interests instead.